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Bloodcurdling Capitalism; Theme Parks Raise the Dead to Lift the Bottom Line
By EDWIN MCDOWELL Strange things are going on at Universal Studios Florida. Roving bands of chain saw-brandishing hoodlums pursue fleeing customers through darkened streets. Zombies and demons lunge from every nook and cranny. Shrieks and foul odors emerge from haunted houses. Basically, in the words of one Universal employee, the theme park wants "to try to make you scream until there's no sound left." Confused? Look at your calendar. It's the night of that annual visit from creepies and crawlies and things that go bump in the night. For Universal, though, the more compelling reason is financial: For 19 nights starting on Oct. 2, the park has been harvesting millions of dollars from its Halloween Horror Nights -- perhaps as much as $11 million this year. A crucial part of the financial equation, of course, is that the fall is normally the worst season for tourism in Orlando and this was once a fairly slow month here. Or, as Tom Williams, chief executive of Universal Studios Escape, which includes both Florida parks, put it recently in an interview in his office on a backlot in the park, the Halloween Horror Nights have transformed "what would otherwise be a sleepy Thursday in October." And that transformation is stark. "We make no claim to be sweet or family-oriented during our Halloween nights," said Tom Schroder, a park spokesman. "We pride ourselves on having an edge." That statement would not surprise the multitudes who alternately watch and shrink from the Festival of the Dead Parade, a macabre march in which even the stiltwalkers exude diabolical intent. Park publicity advises customers: "Due to certain adult themes and the intensity of this event, parental discretion is advised for children ages 3 to 9." But older children, and sometimes their parents, love it. "This is our second year celebrating Halloween at the park," said Robert Cohen, visiting from France with his wife, Brigitte, and their son, Michael, 13. "It's very scary, but that's why Michael and I love it. We want to be frightened." Almost every year the family spends two weeks in Orlando. Mrs. Cohen, less enthralled by the scary stuff, accompanies them to the park -- she prefers that to sitting alone in their hotel room -- but she keeps a sharp eye out for the stalkers and axe murderers while avoiding the haunted houses. She hates being cooped up. A half hour away, Walt Disney World Resort also has Halloween events, but for only three days. And in an apparent dig at Universal, it bills its celebration at the Magic Kingdom as Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, adding that Mickey and his friends "host a delightful, rather than frightful" event. Universal, whose Halloween celebration is in its eighth year, is not the first theme park to discover the nexus between fright and finance; Knotts Berry Farm in Buena Park, Calif., is celebrating its 26th Annual Halloween Haunt. Universal, though, stretches the theme a bit further: its celebration runs 19 nights this year, compared with 16 at Knotts, and it wants to make it a monthlong event. That certainly seems feasible, considering that since the event began in 1991, over one weekend with one haunted house, it expanded to eight nights in 1995 and now encompasses five weekends, with five haunted houses. "We've had double-digit growth every year," Mr. Williams said. "And once you've designed all the attractions, the incremental cost is insignificant." Each of the 19 nights, big crowds pay as much as $42 a person, their autos and vans creating bumper-to-bumper traffic for miles on nearby Interstate 4. "We pretty much limit attendance to 25,000 so people can have a good time," Mr. Williams said. The Halloween Horror Nights, when the park closes at 6 P.M. and reopens an hour later, with an additional admission, "is like 19 extra days in the calendar," he added. How profitable are these scare-fests? On the subject of money, Universal executives here are almost as tight lipped as Frankenstein's monster, who was brought to the screen in a number of Universal films. But assuming the park averages 17,000 visitors a night, at perhaps a $28 average admission price (discounts abound), Halloween Horror Nights would bring in about $9 million this year, plus $2 million or so for food and souvenirs. One must, of course, subtract from that figure what the park would take in if it were running normally, but in October that would be modest. The estimated $11 million may be a drop in the bucket for the $9.8 billion Seagram Company, the parent of Universal Inc., which owns the park jointly with the Rank Group, the $1.2 billion London-based leisure and entertainment company. But for a park this size -- its 8.9 million visitors last year were a distant second to the 39.6 million at Disney's Magic Kingdom, Epcot Center and MGM Studios at Walt Disney World -- it is a nice bit of extra income. While an estimated 90 percent of horror night crowds hail from central Florida, many come from Georgia, and from as far away as Indiana, Louisiana and Missouri. Some out-of-staters no doubt come here to visit Disney World and the area's many other attractions, but many also come expressly for this event. Denise and Eric Chamberlain come here from Detroit, just to be scared. "This is our third year," said Mrs. Chamberlain, a 28-year-old computer operator for E.D.S. Inc. "But we only attend Halloween Horror Nights one night, because I scare very easily." The other day Jay Canter and a companion arrived here from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. "I drive up in the morning and go back the next day," said Mr. Canter, 22, who has attended Horror Nights three other years. As for his 430-mile round trip, "The haunted houses are cool," he explained, "and I like getting scared." Universal Studios Vacations, the company's travel arm, has two Halloween packages -- the One Night Spooktacular, starting at $69 a person, double occupancy, which includes a hotel for one night and an admission, and a Two-Night Gory Getaway, from $115 a person. Universal spends months planning, recruiting and rehearsing for the monthlong show. "This is the biggest event we have," said Skip Sherman, senior vice president for entertainment. "It takes an entire year. And since we're part of a movie company, people expect to see something of quality." Since that movie company, Universal Studios, also gave cinematic life to Dracula and the Creature From the Black Lagoon, everything from prosthetics to mummies to blood-spattered victims is created in meticulous detail. Each haunted house takes about a month to build. The odors of decay, rotten flesh, mold and formaldehyde are formulated in New York especially for the park. Rope, dripping water, varied floor elevations and heat blasts are intended to divert and discombobulate the hordes who stumble through the haunted houses, hoping to avoid the ghouls who materialize from behind pictures or peer down from overhead vents -- not to mention the slashers, mutants, madmen, and even a deranged dentist. "Goblins and ghosts don't do it for our audience, which is very demanding," Bill Hartnett, director of entertainment production, said between showing visitors through the haunted houses. To try to bring new twists to the terror, Universal employees have traveled to New Orleans to learn about vampires and voodoo, and visited Salem, Mass., a town rich in witchery, whose own three-week Halloween celebration is called Haunted Happenings. Outside the haunted houses, hundreds of actors stalk the artificially fog-shrouded streets, lunging at unsuspecting visitors while delivering frequent blood-curdling screams. Grungy-looking members of the Chain Saw Drill Team rev up real, working chain saws (sans blades) that sound like amplified squadrons of killer bees. "You should see the look of terror in some people's eyes, even when you just pretend to start up the chain saw," said David Johnson, who works in the park's entertainment department during the day but wields a chain saw at night. "It's always fun when you phone friends back home and they say, 'You're doing what?'" Meantime, Universal, the perennial Avis to Disney's Hertz in Orlando entertainment, is working full tilt to have its new park, Islands of Adventure, open next summer. It, too, will have a separate admission. Five islands, all built around different themes, will be linked by boat or a bridge from the park's Citywalk, a retail center with a Nascar Cafe, Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville, a Hard Rock Cafe, a Bob Marley Tribute with Jamaican cuisine and reggae music and a Motown Cafe with live entertainment. In another move emulating Disney, Islands of Adventure will also have the first hotel at a Universal site, a 750-room Loew's property. Universal's investment in a second Orlando park is mainly intended to entice visitors to lengthen their stay from the usual one day to five or six days, even if it means sharing some of those days with other Orlando theme parks. No one here has suggested as much, but a visitor to Islands of Adventure cannot help thinking that the Universal executive suite must have given some thought to the possibility that at least three of the islands would be pretty good sites for Halloween celebrations of their own. With separate admissions, of course. External Links Article link Category:Halloween Horror Nights article Category:Halloween Horror Nights VIII: Primal Scream